“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

Obligatory Afghanistan post

It’s what all the cool kids are talking about tonight. I won’t pretend to know what’s in Obama’s heart regarding his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan with the intention of starting to withdraw in 2011. All I can judge him by is what he actually does, and I think what he actually has chosen sucks. By the time the troops are supposedly withdrawn, we will have been in Afghanistan for over 10 years. That’s not a “war.” It’s an occupation. And it’s one that has no clear benefit to nor necessity for the US.

While I admit I don’t know what’s in Obama’s heart, I can guess. This decision reeks of trying to please both sides. He thinks that by sending 30,000 troops, he will placate the neocon war cheerleaders on the right, but by setting an intended withdraw date not that far from now, he will likewise soothe critics from the left. He will instead fail at both. The right will continue to hate him on principle; it’s just about the only principle they have left. Meanwhile, the left will see Obama as just another War President too cowardly to take a stand athwart or make an honest argument against perpetual war.

And that’s really what this is about. I think Obama (and his aides) have bought into the mythic lies about “honor” and “strength” and “valor” and “guts” and not flinching and all that bullshit, and that doing anything other than doubling down and sending more troops is “weak” or “cowardly” or “appeasement” or wishing defeat on America and such. But by buying into these lies, they miss the real point: that it requires even more courage of a president to defy the military-industrial complex and admit what seems obvious to many: that destroying thousands of lives and sinking billions of dollars in an underdeveloped country in central Asia is not worth it to America.

Since he became President, Obama has more than doubled the US presence in Afghanistan. It’s his war now. And his decision is like a worse version of the Iraq surge: bigger (30,000 vs. 20,000) and more pointless. The point of the surge in Iraq was both to quell sectarian violence (it did) and to enable the “left behind” Iraqi forces to maintain that peace. Given that we are still in Iraq with no real end in sight, I consider that second point, and thus the surge, a failure. I don’t see how anyone could consider “success” in Afghanistan – the so-called “Graveyard of Empires” – any more likely.